'Fallout 76' Fans Have Every Right To Be Upset Over $80 Plastic 'Nuka Rum' Bottles

Bethesda is in more hot water with gamers, this time over cheap plastic Nuka Dark rum bottles.

Credit: Bethesda

Fallout fans have had a wild ride this year thanks to the controversial release of Fallout 76, a game that never really stops offering up fresh new scandals.

Sometimes I find online outrage a bit over the top---most of the time, really. Social media can be exhausting with all the outrage, spite and bad blood we encounter there. People behave poorly on the internet. That's nothing new.

But sometimes there is justified outrage. For instance, Bethesda recently got into the booze business with the first officially licensed Fallout 76 rum, Nuka Dark. You'll see in the image below, the bottle is shaped like a bomb and looks pretty neat, like the kind of thing you might buy to put on display in your home or office.

I mean, it looks like it's straight out of a Fallout game, which is cool, right?

Nuka Dark Rum

Credit: Bethesda

With bottles going for $80 or more given the limited quantity (I've seen them for sale for $120) many fans expected a nice glass bottle.

Instead, customers received plastic bottles. Anyone who buys liquor knows that for $80 you don't get a plastic bottle. Plastic is reserved for either very cheap liquor or special bottles designed to go camping with or drink poolside where glass is often forbidden. The bottle pictured above is actually just a plastic shell that goes over the bottle beneath. Customers have also complained that it's difficult to pour the rum with the shell on, but I can't imagine it's that big of a deal to just take the bottle out and leave the shell as the display piece. Actually, it's kind of neat that you can put whatever bottle you want inside the shell so long as it fits.

Still, if you were expecting this to be the bottle and for that bottle to be glass given the price-tag, you might be a bit sad when you discover it's just a plastic shell.

This disappointment might be more poignant, also, given that it comes on the heels of BagGate, a controversy stemming from Bethesda sending cheap nylon bags to special edition customers when the marketing showed nicer canvas bags, though the company did buckle eventually and is sending customers the higher-quality product. It also comes on the heels of Bethesda accidentally doxxing some of its customers when a glitch exposed private customer information on the company's support website.

It's no wonder that fans are upset---after all, the people who buy special Nuka Dark rum bottles or expensive collector's editions of games tend to be the biggest superfans. You don't want to upset your best, most loyal customers. Bethesda can't seem to stop upsetting them.

In any case, I read the most peculiar article about this earlier today. Over at VGR, Matt Morgans makes some very odd claims, writing "Unfortunately, some people may merely be looking for something new to criticise Bethesda about." That may be true, but Bethesda sure is making it easy.

Morgans paints the entire issue as something wrong with gamers rather than something wrong on Bethesda's end. He even says that gamer outrage is misplaced, writing:

Of course, Bethesda does not actually make alcoholic beverages themselves, and herein lies the possibility of misplaced outrage. Now that the product has actually shipped, it seems that some purchasers are upset over what they perceive as another instance of misleading marketing; similar to the recent nylon bag controversy. However, they appear to be directing that disappointment at Bethesda instead of the Silver Screen Bottling Co.; perhaps due to a misunderstanding of who actually created and sold the product.

This is incredibly silly. Bethesda licensed the product and should ensure its quality. Plenty of other entertainment properties have alcoholic tie-ins. I bought a The Walking Dead bottle of wine just the other day. It was decent wine and the bottle was glass with a cool design on it (that you can even use with an AR app). I wouldn't have bought it if it came in a plastic bottle. I would have been disappointed that The Walking Dead allowed such a product to exist in the first place.

If anything, people who are unhappy with this product should be upset with both Bethesda and Silver Screen Bottling Co.

Morgans continues with an even more puzzling comment:

It seems that some customers are more unhappy at the lost potential for using the bottle as a display piece than what was actually inside it; begging the question why they were apparently happy to pay $80 for it in the first place.

How is this begging any question at all? Of course people bought this to use as a display piece and not for what was actually inside it. That's why they paid $80 for rum! This isn't an "it seems" moment and it begs no questions. It's just another weird way for Morgans to let Bethesda off the hook while letting us know that the real problem is those nasty entitled gamers. How dare someone want a quality bottle when they pay $80 for a special limited edition Fallout 76 rum bottle. The nerve!

Morgans points out that there was nothing in the marketing saying these bottles would be glass, so it's not a case of false advertising. Still, there's nothing that I can find on the product page that says it's plastic either. It's pretty understandable that customers would expect glass for such a hefty price-tag.

Silver Screen Bottling Co. has issued a statement about the bottles which I'll leave here in full:

Regarding our product, the COO, Sommelier and product specialist of Silver Screen Bottling Co., Ryan McElveen, has written a note to our customers about the story of the intentional and complex design of the Nuka Dark Rum product.

The packaging of Nuka Dark Rum was a design that was months in the making and we went to great lengths to ensure that no corners were cut. It cost over 2X what it would have if we would have simply cast a glass mold. We went through many prototypes. In fact, in all, we had four different iterations of the design, two of which were glass exteriors. We determined that a glass bottle alone would not have been dramatic enough for the look we wanted. We wanted something big and bold for the loyal Fallout fanbase – something that honored the game. Over 100 hours were spent just writing the code to create the 3D-printed prototype of the shells. The “bottle cap” which is actually an integrated cork/cap, was engineered and re-engineered several times to ensure it fit on the bottle in a manner that looked exactly the way it is supposed to inside of a cork finished bottle (not a screw cap). A design created, specifically, for rum. The idea was that the bottle was housed in a “vault of its own.”

The dimensions of the entire package are 13”x 6”. It is roughly 60% larger than a standard 750 ml bottle and It will stand out on any bar. This is a project we are extremely proud of and we are sorry that you feel that you were in any way deceived. We were very deliberate in the creation of this product and paid great attention to the brand and the quality. Not just the presentation, but the rum inside the bottle as well. We can’t wait for you to see it in person and taste if for yourself, we’re not sure that the images or videos do it justice. Now, if you don’t agree when you receive yours please let our team know by submitting a form in the “Questions About My Order” section below and we will work to make it right.

At least it sounds like a great deal of work and design time went into these bottles (which I haven't seen in person---I'm not a fan of the game or of drinking rum.) I'm sure some people are perfectly happy with the product and that's completely fine. To each their own! Others may find the upset over this a bit baffling. Fair enough.

But it's also perfectly fine to be disappointed when you've spent good money and received an inferior product, or at least something that didn't live up to expectations. Blaming customers for being disappointed by a product is so strange to me, but it happens in gaming all the time.

No, this isn't the biggest deal in the world. In isolation, I doubt many people would have batted an eye. It's just that Fallout 76 has been disappointing in so many ways---so many controversies have haunted the game since even before launch---that any new letdown stings.

What do you think about this whole rum bottle controversy? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.